By Delia Macpherson, Staff Contributor
Dante’s Inferno is a love story that takes place in hell. When you read it, your imagination can’t help but form vivid images of ice and mud and blood. The writing is dark and poetic.
Dante’s Divinus Inferno was performed this past weekend in the Sir James Dunn Theatre at Dalhousie. But the show wasn’t Dante’s Inferno at all.
I’m waiting in my chair. The theatre is packed. Lights dim. Curtains open. A cello player sits centre stage, in the middle of a large dome. Two massive screens form a circular shape around him, one in front and one behind. I imagine these screens were supposed to be the highlight of the show: an edgy, interesting way of depicting images of hell.
After minute five, I had completely lost interest in the slightly washed-out looking images of space and the Second World War. It was cool in an “I’m going to get high and watch a screensaver off Windows Media Player” way.
Most of the acting took place behind the first screen, so their faces and bodies were blurred. The intimacy wasn’t there.
The post-modern interpretation used familiar characters, such as Beatrice, Virgil and Dante, but it wasn’t true to the plot at all. The play only spent about 40 minutes on Dante passing through hell. The only circles shown of nine were the first three.
The production was abstract and fragmented. Every so often, a random scene of a tour guide and group of tourists who were clearly from modern day, would stomp onto the stage in the middle of a scene.
For the majority of the production I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
The show was only about an hour and 10 minutes. The first few minutes included two small children: one riding a bike and the other skipping rope. We didn’t see them again until the last minute of the show. I have no idea what significance they had to the plot.
The actors would mostly stand still in one spot, and speak out lengthy and boring monologues about the trinity, god, death, the universe, etc. There was very little movement at all. Mostly Dante and Virgil just stood around talking about themselves and listening to the bubbly tour guide snapping pictures with tourists. Dante was a whiney child, Vigil the uninterested parent.
There were no interesting props that would resemble hell. The stage was black The lighting was white. The screen images were pale and dull. There were no demons with body paint that moved with mind-provoking choreography. There were no upside-down crosses or skulls. All those things that could make a play about hell badass were missing.
Jessica Jerome played Charon in one of the few scenes that really captured my interest. She plays the boatman of the Acheron River, one of the four rivers in the underworld. The screens show water swooshing about. The sound of waves and the ocean ring through the theatre. She stands centre stage holding two massive oars sticking out of stage left and right. She wears a plain, ugly, floor-length dress. Her blond hair is down. She begins rowing and moving slightly as she speaks. Her acting is strong and moving. Her voice is dynamic with emotion and volume. All of a sudden, white worm-like things start writhing and crawling towards her. There are 10 of them, at least. They are souls swimming in the river of hell. They get closer and closer to her until she starts screaming:
“Spineless creature! Blasted Reptiles! … We may be in hell but we still have our pride … a place in hell is still to be earned.”
Satan, played by Matthew Peach, was also really well done. He was a small man, neatly tucked into a black suit. He had a metallic silver suitcase and moved with a jump in his step. He spoke with laughter in his voice that was so insincere it gave me goose bumps.
These two scenes were together less than 10 minutes of the show. Most of it was dull and blah. It was neither a classical piece of theatre nor a modern one.
Dante’s Divinus Inferno was a failed experiment.
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